Review of Lost Teachings of the Cathars

Another good review, this time from the Association of Mormon Letters website. I hardly know anything substantial about the LDS. I did exchange emails with the late Welsh poet and short story writer Leslie Norris, who was a long-term poet-in-residence at Brigham Young University in Utah. And once in a London pub a man came up to me and asked if I was a Mormon. I was a Mormon. I had to explain that I was wearing a suit because I had just come from work and the book under my arm was not the bible or the Book of Mormon but a volume of Shakespeare as I was going to see Julius Caesar in Regents Park later that evening.

The reviewer sees similarities between Cathar practices and those of the Latter Day Saints.

“The Cathars have spawned a renewed interest in their history in our day and age, and even now “Neo-Cathars” attach meaning to those who were martyred for the cause of God and choose to follow Cathar teachings according to their interpretations. Novels, movies, music and Cathar Country tourism testify of the continuing appeal of the Cathar sect. Probing questions such as “Who am I?,” “Where did I come from?,” “How long have I existed?,” “What will become of me?, “What is my relationship to God?” have been pondered by many. *The Lost Teachings of the Cathars* gives historical evidence of the conflicting ideas answering those questions and attempts to trace a history and context for readers interested in tracing the diffusion of the Christian sects and schools of thought. The Gnostics, Manichaeans, Bogomils and even Buddhism carry parallels that are infused within Catharism. Unfortunately for the Cathars, they did not survive the barbarity of the Inquisition, but left an inspirational story and myth for us to explore.

As we search for meaning in life, we join those who have gone before us, attempting to understand the spiritual realm and our places in it. As illustrated in *The Lost Teachings of the Cathars*, “Good Men” and “Good Women” strove through ritual and practice to rise from the materialism assigned to our fallen state to the spiritual realm deemed the pinnacle of our existence. Smith has given us a gift and glimpse of this universal quest in this book.”